As for civil rights, Democrats could never have made any progress during the 1960s movement without the support of Republicans. But today, there remains a black-oriented civil rights crisis that is of Democrat creation: The mass murder of mostly young black men by other young black men in Chicago, which is about as deep blue as it gets.

So bad is the violence and so high the death rate in the nation’s third-largest city — a virtual gun-free zone — that on the campaign trail in 2016, then-GOP nominee Donald Trump promised to send in the Army to clean up the streets.

A call for help

Writing in The Hill, Jason D. Hill of DePaul University in Chicago is pleading with Trump to do something radical: Suspend U.S. law, the 1870s-era Posse Comitatus Act, then send in armed troops to restore order to parts of the city that have become nothing less than a war zone.

He writes:

Wannabe-commandos terrorize neighborhoods, challenging not only local authorities but the very authority you exercise as president of this great nation. The potency of your own presidency is ridiculed when thugs and barbaric criminals take it upon themselves to establish lawless fiefdoms, usurping the law and order on which this republic was built and upon which its continued existence depends, as they kill innocent lives. …

…I ask that you use your powers to suspend the dated Posse Comitatus Act, which unfairly limits your ability to use domestic militarization to respond to crises. Posse Comitatus makes no mention of the use of the militia, the National Guard, the Navy or the Marines. You can suspend this law and send in the forces necessary to quiet our streets and restore safety to at-risk neighborhoods.

For the record, Posse Comitatus may be “dated,” as Hill suggests, but its passage was as vital then as its continued existence is now. A Reconstruction-era law, it forbade federal military forces from being utilized in a law enforcement capacity. The reasoning was clear: The military exists to destroy opposing armies and conquer nations, not ‘police’ American streets.

And no, presidents cannot merely “suspend” laws or create them out of whole cloth. Well, okay, Obama did it, but only because a highly partisan Congress allowed him to do so.

That said, Hill — a Jamaican immigrant who came to the U.S. more than three decades ago and worked his tail off to eventually earn a doctorate — has a point in that Trump is not necessarily powerless here to use some form of the military in order to accomplish the same objective. He could activate the National Guard and probably ought to, though as a state force first. Presidents have traditionally been hesitant to task Guard troops because they are first-responders when it comes to local and regional disasters.

What’s noteworthy about Hill’s plea is that he’s bringing some needed attention to a national scandal that reeks of Left-wing failure: Vast segments of Chicago are under siege by criminal gangs that are little better than ISIS, and it’s obvious more Democratic leadership isn’t the solution.